The Mysteries of Montreal: Memoirs of a Midwife

Ute L. McNab was with the Women's Studies Program at the University of Waterloo.

The Mysteries is comprised of the memoirs of Charlotte Führer, who for over 30 years was a midwife in Montreal in the late nineteenth century. Originally published in 1881, this book was republished in 1984 along with Professor Peter Ward’s Introduction. Ward, the editor, speculates in the Introduction that Führer used “a common technique of popular fiction to titillate her audience with delicious tales of wrongdoing in the boudoir” (p.28). Therefore, The Mysteries is more “fun” for its readership than Führer’s purpose suggests. Führer, drawing on her wealth of experience as a midwife, offers scandalous, moral, and sometimes amusing stories that deal with the situations in which young women find themselves during the course of love in urban Montreal. It becomes very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction in these stories, and by the end the characters are stereotypical and symbolic in order to teach a moral lesson, which is the virtue of chastity inside or outside of marriage. Führer’s account is a glimpse of the sexual mores of Victorian Canada. Führer’s stories note the vulnerability of women and children but give little account of her obstetrical practice. Instead, she dwells on the mid-wife’s social responsibilities. Part of her practice was a private maternity hospital; however, since she helped to dispose of unwanted children, her work was linked to “moral infamy.”

In her tales it is clear that women always lost more than men because of their dependence on men and society. Most of Führer’s female characters were wronged and abandoned, either by faithless lovers or by inconstant husbands. The exception is Mrs. Clarkson (Chapter VI), who, far from being an alternative model, is a sexual predator whose immaturity leads to her destruction. Führer does not offer any solutions; she only points out the dangers. Illegitimacy is the greatest peril of illicit sex, and the “shame” of the situation makes concealment imperative; otherwise there is social ostracization and economic degradation.

As literature, the book derives from Victorian literary conventions in which marriage was the dominant theme, in which honor and affection formed the basis of a lasting union and the transgressors were punished. Authors such as Jane Austen and George Eliot greatly influenced the German literary tradition. Germans eagerly read English novels and German authors such as Fontane (not Fontaine, p.25) imitated the English style. Führer, being German, would have surely been influenced by this tradition. It is unrealistic to suggest that Führer was rooted in Canadian literary culture and ignored the realist experiments of European and American avant-garde novelists. Nor can she simply be distinguished by the claim that she based her conviction on years of observation. Surely all creative writers base their work on some kind of observation (p.27).

Professor Ward is right to resurrect Führer’s account, if only to give us an historical perspective and social commentary on the mores of nineteenth century Montreal. He is adept at giving the reader an historical insight into the role of midwives and an account of birth practices in Canada and how these reflect nineteenth century Canadian society. However, his discussion of birth practices would have been greatly enhanced if he had incorporated the recent research done by Angus McLaren on birth control and abortion in Canada between 1870 and 1920. Nevertheless, Professor Ward should continue his research and reclaim Führer and those like her as an important and fascinating part of the experience of women in Victorian Canada.